Teens on Target
At Teens on Target (TNT), students from Oakland neighborhoods most affected by violence learn to honor their own stories, to use their experience to make change, and to teach their peers to avoid and prevent violence.
About teens on target
TNT participants learn a youth-authored violence prevention curriculum and present interactive violence prevention workshops to middle school students across the city. They learn to speak to the media and to city leaders about their stories and their own ideas for change and engage in advocacy efforts in their communities.
TNT provides work experience; paying students for their developing violence prevention expertise and presentation skills reinforces the importance of their violence prevention efforts.
Teens on target History
This all began with a group of 1989 Castlemont High School students who were growing up in one of Oakland’s most violent communities. They wanted to understand the violence around them and find ways to prevent it. Those students developed the TNT violence prevention curriculum and advocacy manual as a way of initiating a public discussion of violence, its causes and prevention and becoming part of the solution.